Monday, May 12, 2014

There
is a reason why the Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC)
recognized
the
untapped
potential of
eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) in
2009.
XBRL
facilitates
accurate
financial
comparisons
across companies to improve business performance, investment
analysis, and decision-making.

It's
a known fact that banks
and their regulatory bodies are drowning in data. Unorganized
data is leading
to issues with long processing times, error reconciliation, re-work,
speed to market, and data analysis. XBRL
continues to prove its the
answer to the big data issue banks and regulatory bodies are facing
today.

A
standardized reporting language and process, like
XBRL,allows
business
leaders to
base their
decisions
on meaningful data, and
saves time on data collection; both
lead to improved risk management. Most
importantly, XBRL has
reduced the processing times when creating and managing the
information required for regulators.

Since
2010 it has been expected that large foreign companies, who
currently use International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS),
submit their financial returns
to the SEC using XBRL. By
doing so, it has begun to create a global standard for financial
reporting.

However,
many companies have yet to realize how XBRL is a value added tool for
analysis; instead,
they see it as a complex new compliance mandate. The
XBRL Power Suite is an end-to-end XBRL solution created
by SQL Power Group
that accelerates the collection of high quality financial data,
formatted in the electronic standardized way, for quicker financial
analysis and to improve communications between regulatory agencies.
It
has been proven to take the complexity out of XBRL filings.

The
platform renders
returns forms, supports
Data Collection based upon standard XBRL Formulas, delivers
valuable feedback to the
subscriber on their returns and provides
real time XBRL validation and final certification.

SQL
Power Group's XBRL solution is
based on a low-risk, modular architecture that leverages their thin
client XBRL Forms and XBRL Power EAS platform as the building blocks
for the user experience - and couples these with XPE, the industry's
highest performing and most scalable XBRL processing engine. A
pre-built reporting and analytics solution for XBRL data that
interfaces with XPE has also
been incorporated into the solution. Finally, but certainly not
least, XBRL Designer - a taxonomy design studio - is integrated into
the platform solution for taxonomy and returns design and layout at
the business user level.

While
XBRL is the answer
to more accurate standardized financial reporting, SQL Power Group's
XBRL Power Suite is the answer to solving complex regulatory
requirements with ease!

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Business Analytics vs. Business Intelligence:

What most BI Vendors don't want you to know

Let's talk about what most Business Intelligence (BI) vendors would really prefer not to discuss. A lot of people tend to misuse the term "BI", and even the industry itself has developed a common meaning for the term which is a bit of a misnomer. Traditionally BI has referred mostly to the front-end -- and I think most people when they talk about it would generally think about BI as the front-end.

We prefer the broader term Business Analytics which is the way we like to think about it at SQL Power - because it's a lot more than just BI or presentation layer. The implication is that you're going to have to be moving data from possibly multiple raw operational sources in order to create higher quality business information on the other side - and to accomplish that, there's a little more to it than just front-end work.

So for anyone evaluating a "BI" vendor or rather a Business Analytics vendor, its more about what that vendor can actually do with the data-sets that they're presented with - because there really are a couple of distinct strategies that more specialized Business Analytics vendors can take to provide quick workable solutions - efficiently and inexpensively.

For instance, if I'm integrating data from applications like NetSuite, or Salesforce with a client's on-premise homegrown applications, I'm going to be given data in its raw natural state and unfortunately that data in its raw form is rarely something that you can just drop into a visualization tool like a MicroStrategy or Tableau and make sense of it. In most cases transformation and manipulation are required - so the real challenge becomes: How do I automate the whole process?

SQL Power has been doing just that for over twenty years, responsible for DW project work at organizations like Scotiabank, TELUS and TREB as well as at local and international FSAs deploying against our superVision™ Suite, an XBRL-based filing and analytics "disclosure" platform for regulators.

Over that time we've acquired not only experiential knowledge from deploying successfully against these complex analytics projects, but along the way we've also developed some very useful automation tools that help our consultants significantly accelerate project delivery and improve TCO - particularly for our smaller clients whom may have not yet made the investment in these products. These tools include: SQL Power Architect, a unique data modelling and profiling tool that enables reverse-engineering of existing databases, profiling against source databases, and ETL metadata auto-generation; SQL Power Loader for automating ETL process development; and SQL Power DQguru, our data cleansing tool for consolidating, cleansing and de-duping key dimensions.

If you look at the "BI" vendors out there, most really require the customer to figure out all of the ETL and data management work for themselves - the burden of all the important work required to get the data prepped and ready - and that's really our specialty.

We have the proven expertise and the right productivity tools to fully automate and accelerate your next Business Analytics deployment - and because we bring these tools to the engagement at no additional cost, we're priced well below the pack. Business people love us because we're fast, inexpensive and we know their pain - IT tolerates us because we offer proven, well architected, easily managed scalable solutions.

Join our Webinar on October 11th to explore the benefits and challenges of cloud-based XBRL solutions and learn how implementing a hosted platform can help insulate Regulators and Filers from the complexities of XBRL to pave the way for 100% compliance.

Discussion Topics:

Leveraging existing Global Taxonomies

Taxonomy Design and Tweaking in the cloud

Data Collection and Real-Time validation in the cloud

Increased Supervisory efficiencies in the cloud

Real-Time Analytics in the cloud

Benefits of a cloud-based solution

Presenters:

Sam P. Selim (Founder & CEO, SQL Power Group; XBRL Program Manager)

Dan Loney (SVP, SQL Power Group)

Jason Brown (Principal Consultant, SQL Power Group)

The webinar will include a Live Demonstration of SQL Power's turn-key hosted XBRL Data Collection and Analytics solution, as well as a Question and Answer period.

...Here's how Community/Enterprise projects are handled in SQL Power Architect and SQL Power Wabit:

Architect/Wabit Projects created in the Community Edition can be migrated to Enterprise Edition.

Architect/Wabit Projects created/saved in Enterprise Edition are stored in the Enterprise server database and cannot be accessed by the Community Edition.

When an Architect/Wabit Enterprise license (or free trial period) expires, the Enterprise server database and any projects therein are "locked out" (they are still there, but not accessible) until a license is obtained/renewed.

Note: For SQL Power DQguru, all Projects can be created by/accessed by either Community or Enterprise version.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Lately, many people have been emailing us at SQL Power Software, asking how to access flat files instead of databases - so I thought I'd take a minute to talk about the subject.

The bad news is that SQL Power software does not support flat file access out of the box. (SQL Power Architect, Wabit and DQguru are high-performance data tools, designed to work with large, industrial-size databases and data models - not excel files.)

HOWEVER: the good news is that since we use JDBC for data access, you can in fact connect to ANY data source, providing you have a working JDBC driver for that data source.

For example: want to connect to a .csv file? Just search for a "csv JDBC driver".

As we don't do a lot of flat-file work ourselves, we'd love to hear about your experiences with these situations. (Especially if you've come across a particularly good JDBC driver for a certain flat file type, so we can recommend it to others.)

Friday, April 8, 2011

This event is hosted by XBRL Canada, a not-for-profit consortium of leading Canadian companies and organisations, whose role is to create and maintain XBRL taxonomies based on Canadian reporting standards, to increase the awareness, knowledge and understanding of XBRL and its uses in Canada and to stimulate and promote the adoption of XBRL in Canada. XBRL Canada is a jurisdiction of XBRL International.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

The Business Intelligence Forum
May 26 2011 8am-noon at the Hilton Toronto
Presented by MicroStrategy

The Business Intelligence Forum offers a unique, interactive environment to gain technical insights to enhance your business intelligence initiatives and view groundbreaking BI demonstrations. You will also have the opportunity to exchange ideas with peers and industry experts and hear best practices from successful customer case studies.

To register or for more information, please contact Moe Nawaz at SQL Power Consulting:
moe@sqlpower.ca
416 221 4220 ext. 273

Thursday, January 20, 2011

If you're in the Toronto area, join us on Feb. 17 for a Free Breakfast Seminar to learn about cost-effective Mobile Business Intelligence. Register today at http://www.sqlpower.ca/consulting/page/biseminar

Agenda includes:- The Real Business Impact of Knowledge Discovery- How to make the most of your BI Budget- How to quickly address end-user BI demands for a fraction of the cost- Timely Strategic Intelligence with Mobile Devices

Seminar includes a live demo of MicroStrategy Mobile BI and a Free Continental Breakfast.